The Beastie Boys, meanwhile, when they weren’t on hiatus due to MCA’s battle with cancer (now thankfully in remission), released instrumental album The Mix-Up in 2007, and before that, the thoughtful To the 5 Boroughs in 2004. But neither could have featured a music video like “Make Some Noise”; the last time the Beasties had that much fun was Hello Nasty, thirteen years ago.

As legacy artists with large fanbases, both Nicks and the Beasties have been getting their share of press leading up to today. For these two, “a return to form” doesn’t just mean “nobody bought the previous album.” But does their songwriting persist? And do they remain relevant?

The reviews are still rolling in for Nicks’s In Your Dreams, but they are more favorable than not; in Rolling Stone, Rob Sheffield called the album “her finest collection of songs since the Eighties.” And the Beastie Boys, ever the critical darlings, have gotten rave reviews for Hot Sauce Committee, Pt. 2: in the New York Times, Jon Pareles praises their “strictly old school” sound.

If listeners and buyers agree with critics, that would suggest that music fans look for a consistency from our long-term artists that we reject from newer groups. Why does time change our perspective in such a way?